


In the Beginning

by drakkynfyre47



Category: The Grimnoir Chronicles - Larry Correia
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Spoilers for Book 1: Hard Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-28 22:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3872050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drakkynfyre47/pseuds/drakkynfyre47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jake Sullivan goes from an innocent kid to the hard, tough warrior he will remain. </p><p>Sullivan's life, from before the Second Somme to the end of the first book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I get very excited about Jake Sullivan.

Jake wasn’t the smart one, not until Jimmy caught the fever. Jimmy had always been the smart one, until he was the simple one, and then he was the dead one. Matty was the tough one, the oldest, the biggest, and then he was the evil one. Jake? Jake was the youngest, nothing special. Until the fever took Jimmy’s mind. And then he had to be the smart one. Matty certainly wasn’t going to be, so it fell to Jake.

When the call to war came, Jake felt the patriotic fire stir within him. The Sullivans weren’t cowards. The Sullivans would show America that Actives weren’t bad, that Actives helped people. The First Volunteer would be the perfect place to do that.

Except it wasn’t. The Second Somme proved that. Jimmy… Jimmy was dead. Jake and Matty had sworn to protect him, and they’d failed. Matty’s face was ripped and torn, half of it dead, the other half twitching eerily on its own. Jake was physically fine, but now there was a Jimmy-shaped hole in his heart, one that no one else could fill.

After the war, Jake and Matty came home alone.

Matty stayed in the AEF. When he went missing, Jake gave him up for lost. His brothers were dead and gone, and he was the last Sullivan. So Jake went wandering. He spent some time in New Orleans, and it was there he met Delilah.

Delilah… Delilah gave his life meaning again. He’d thought he was cold, hard-hearted, but watching her, he became human again. He loved her, and that scared him, because he'd loved Jimmy, he'd loved Matty. Not in the same way, obviously, but still. Everyone he loved was gone, and he couldn't stand to see that happen to Delilah. She was good and pure and innocent, in a way he could never be. He had lived through the Second Somme, after all.

When he went to prison, he thought about her, about Jimmy, about Matty. He’d failed all of them. He wrote letters, mostly to Delilah, but never received a single one back. He started writing to Matty, to Jimmy. Those letters were private ones, personal ones that he never sent and would never allow to see the light of day.

He broke people there. He killed men, men who had heard that the murderer Jake Sullivan was a tough guy, and wanted to prove themselves. He killed in self-defense, and those who tested themselves against the Heavy inevitably left in body bags. Jake hated it, hated that killing was so easy for him now, that he could still sleep at night.

Through it all, he studied. He practiced with his Power, using it to break rocks, because if he had to be here, if he had to break rocks, then he was going to be the best damn rock-breaker that Rockville Penitentiary had ever seen. Jake grew to hate being called “Heavy”. It was dehumanising, humiliating, and he decided, from then on, he was going to call himself a Gravity Spiker. It fit, it worked with what he could do, and it had a nice ring to it. Dignified, he thought, far more dignified than being called a Heavy.

J. Edgar Hoover may have been a jerk, but he was a useful jerk. He’d gotten Jake out of Rockville, out of that neverending cycle of breaking rocks, reading, and sleeping. All Jake had to do was agree to help capture five Active criminals. It didn’t seem too hard, but then the fifth time rolled around.

The name of the target shocked Jake to the core. Delilah wasn’t like that, wasn’t a murderer. She was different, she was special. She would never do something like that, no matter how her father had died. So Jake resolved to find out what had made her do it, what had changed her so much that he didn’t even know her any more.

His quest wound up taking him to the Grimnoir Knights. They seemed like good people, some more like him than others. He genuinely liked Heinrich, thought the young blond German was a good ally and watchman - he was, after all, a Fade. Dan was a different story; you could never trust a Mouth, no matter what, though Jake was good enough that he could sense an intrusion, however subtle. 

When Faye shot him, thinking he was Matty - Madi, now - he saw the Power. And it was beautiful. It was alive, pulsing, breathing, practically glowing with energy. His eyes opened wide, trying to take in everything he possibly could, memorising, recording, studying.

He woke to a world of pain, but he had to write down what he remembered. It was incredibly important that he kept those marks, those images, because no one else had ever seen the Power the way he had. He certainly wasn’t going to give them to the Grimnoir, but he needed them, and maybe Delilah, too.

Then he met Black Jack Pershing. The old Reader had been under the curse of a Pale Horse, and on his deathbed, had given Jake the memories, the weapon Jake needed to take care of the Peace Ray, the Imperium, and the Chairman.

John Moses Browning had given him the physical weapon he needed. Browning was one of the few men Jake respected completely. The Cog designed the best handgun a man could ever ask for, and Jake could never have too many of those.

Jake hated the Imperium with a burning passion. They had taken Delilah, his Delilah, and for that he would kill them all, especially Madi. Madi, who had once upon a time been Matthew Sullivan, his brother, his friend. Madi, who had murdered Faye’s grandfather, who had raped and pillaged with the best of the Iron Guard.

And he did it. He had killed Madi, and Faye had killed the Chairman. But that didn’t mean he could have Delilah back, that Faye could have her grandfather back. That made him incredibly angry. And an angry Gravity Spiker wasn’t someone you wanted on your bad side. Jake would make sure of that. He was going to make Delilah’s death mean something. He was going to make the world safe, for Delilah’s sake, for Faye’s sake, so that no one else would have to suffer.

Jake turned his face to the sky, and set to work.


End file.
